Control
by Alec Star
Summary: A friend asked me for my take on how could Leoben have broken Kara, this is my answer. This takes place between LDYB and Occupation. It is kind of a dark fic so please read the warnings!
1. Part 1: The Frying Pan

Disclaimers- I don't own the concepts, I don't own the characters, I make no money, I make no sense and I get no sleep.  
Title - Control (1/4)  
Author - Alec Star  
Rating - M.  
Warnings - Physical, psychological and sexual abuse (not particularly descriptive but still fairly disturbing).  
Spoilers - Everything up to and including 'LDYB, part 2'.  
Summary - A friend asked me for my take on how could Leoben have broken Kara, this is my answer.

**_Author's notes_**: Hi guys, okay first of all a word of caution: this is not a happy fic. In fact it is about as far from a happy fic as you can get short of a death fic.

It began life as a sort of challenge a few months ago when someone asked me for my take on how I would have had Leoben break Kara on New Caprica and then it really started taking form around Christmas when my mind was looking for a way to escape the hypocrisy of the season (nothing against Christmas itself, in fact I love a good Christmas get-together with people I care about but I freely admit that the hubbub and the madness that surround that particular holiday usually end up getting on my nerves). I am posting it now because... well, Valentine's Day is right around the corner and let's just say that I enjoy plastic hearts about as much as I enjoy plastic trees.

In other words think of this as my mind's idea of insulin when confronted with an onslaught of fake good cheer (for the record my other dark fics '_Under Alien Skies-Propagation_' and '_Friends and Foes_' had similar origins).

Of course if that were the extent of it, it wouldn't have been so bad. In fact by the time the Christmas season is over my mind is usually ready to move on to the 'comfort' part of a hurt/comfort story so things work out fine in the end, unfortunately this time around the producers had other plans. I had originally intended for this fic to be part one of a two part series, with part one focusing on the hurt and a much longer part two focusing on the comfort but the truth is that right now I'm not all that happy with the direction the show is going so I've decided to go back to writing stories that go AU before the Pegasus shows up (as far as I'm concerned that's where things started going downhill fast. Sure, I love some of the episodes that came after that, in fact I believe that they include some of the best the show has to offer, but at the same time I feel that's where the interpersonal dynamics between the characters that made me care about them as people began to change and not for the better). In other words, chances are that part two of this would-be series will never be written.

Yes, this story is a stand-alone and it is complete but it is hurt without comfort and, even though it is not particularly descriptive, it does deal with physical, sexual and psychological abuse.

You have been warned.

Okay, that was my not-so-little rant, if you are still with me and you are still interested I hope you'll 'enjoy' it, however if dark fics are not your cup of tea you may want to skip this one. As for how this relates to canon and my other stories: as usual '**_Shards'_** is my basis for where Kara is coming from but there are no references to it in this fic and '**_Long Shadows'_** never happened in this universe, as for canon that is harder to say. It does not openly contradict it (at least not much) but seeing how canon is vague at best as to what happened in the four months between LDYB and 'Occupation' it is hard to tell.

I guess that's it for now so I'll just shut up and let the story do the talking (but if you would like to leave a review I would really appreciate it!).

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**_Control_**  
**Part 1: The Frying Pan**

Kara could still remember the cylons' arrival, being dragged from her tent and taken by Leoben back to an orbiting basestar where she had found Simon waiting for her. She wasn't entirely sure how long she had been there at his 'mercy'... after all, the lights had been always on, always so bright as to be almost blinding so she hadn't had any sort of reference. Her best guess was that she had been there for a couple of weeks at least and a little more than a month at most.

What she did know was that those days had been terrifying.

Unlike what had been the case back on Caprica, where Simon had at least pretended to be human, this time around he hadn't bothered. He had known that she was well aware of what he was and why she was there so he hadn't even tried to gain her cooperation... besides, it had become apparent almost immediately that her 'cooperation' was anything but necessary.

From the moment she had arrived she had been stripped naked and thrown into a room with no furniture other than an exam table complete with stir-ups and restraints and no company other than a centurion. There had been a metal toilet in a corner, that was true, but that was the extent of the 'luxury' her captors had afforded her. She hadn't even been given access to a sink in which she could hope to wash her hands, much less a shower... hell, they hadn't even bothered with anything remotely resembling toilet paper. There had been nothing in there to hold her attention, nothing that could possibly have enabled her mind to escape her prison.

Her meals had consisted of a bowl filled with a grayish, tasteless, gruel-like substance that had been brought to her by another one of the mechanical monsters and she had been forced to eat that with her bare hands because no utensils had ever been provided.

Every so often Simon would come in with a couple of centurions in tow. The centurions would invariably grab a hold of her, tie her to that table and then Simon would run his 'tests' on her. A few of those tests had been excruciatingly painful, most of them had been intrusive as hell and all of them had been utterly terrifying, especially because she had no idea as to what it was that he was doing or what was coming up next. She was desperate to know what was going on, what was being done to her body but Simon had never deigned to answer any of her questions, he had never even acknowledged the fact that she had spoken at all. In fact until the last day she had been on that basestar she had heard no voice other than her own... and then Leoben had come back.

She had felt particularly vulnerable, exposed. Yes, she had been naked for several weeks but while Simon's gaze was all but indifferent, seeing her as nothing but the lab specimen she had known herself to be, Leoben's was anything but.

He had been looking over Simon's shoulder as he examined her and she could hardly remember having ever felt that uncomfortable before. For a moment she had been relieved when Simon had released her from her restraints --that had at least enabled her to scuttle as far away from Leoben as the confines of her 'prison' would allow-- but that relief had quickly turned to panic when she had heard Simon tell Leoben that he was free to take her away.

That was the day she had been brought back to New Caprica, to the newly completed cell/apartment she had been calling home for the past two and a half months and upon her return she had been shocked by the changes that had taken place on the planet's surface, though in a way she figured it was only natural that with an endless, tireless mechanical workforce at the cylon's disposal, the construction should have progressed apace. After all that had been the promise that had led to the cylons' creation in the first place, that was what had started the whole thing, what had sealed the fate of the Twelve Colonies.

Of course, she hadn't exactly been given much time to contemplate those changes either, not when almost as soon as they had crossed the threshold Leoben had pushed her against a wall and forced himself on her, taking full advantage of the fact that Simon hadn't exactly bothered with clothes before handing her over to him in the first place.

That was when she had finally realized that --as bad as things had been on that basestar-- Simon had been nothing but the beginning.

TBC


	2. Part 2: The Stick

**_For notes, warnings and disclaimers see part 1._**

**_Author's notes_**: Hi guys, just a reminder that if you are looking for a happy Valentine's Day story, you have come to the **_wrong_** place. On the other hand, if you are looking for a way to escape the Valentine 'spirit' this story may be just what the doctor order (as long as you've read the warnings in the previous chapter and know what you are getting into). Having said that, happy Valentine's day!

Alec

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**Part 2: The Stick  
**  
Being held by Leoben turned out to be a completely different experience as far as Kara was concerned. Unlike Simon, who had inflicted pain with the cold indifference of a scientist, seeing her suffering as nothing more than a negligible byproduct of his research, Leoben relished it. He delighted in making her scream and then taunted her for her weakness, reminding her of their first encounter on the _Geminon Carrier_. Back then their positions had been reversed and he had refused to give into her and beg for mercy.

On the other hand she had to admit that out of those constant reminders of that first encounter had come at least one good thing: she had finally been allowed to shower, to wash herself... even if Leoben had been watching her the whole time. In fact, unlike Simon, Leoben was almost obsessive about her cleanliness. She remembered that too from their time on the _Geminon Carrier_, she remembered how even back then he had claimed to find body odors offensive. For a moment she had almost been tempted to refuse his order to get clean, just to see what he would do about it, but in the end the mere thought of being able to wash herself, of being able to get rid of the gods knew how many weeks worth of sweat, fear and filth, had turned out to be too tempting. Yes, by walking straight into the shower the moment he had told her to do so she had played straight into Leoben's hands and she knew it but she was a prisoner and that meant that there would be plenty of chances for her to at least try to fight back. She knew she had to pick her battles and the bottom line was that there was no point in turning her personal hygiene into one.

Of course, their attitudes toward her cleanliness --or even her suffering-- had not been the extent of the differences between the two cylons. Another, far more relevant one, had to do with the fact that --unlike Simon, who had never even acknowledged her questions about what was being done to her in the first place-- Leoben had been only too happy to fill her in on what was being done to her.

She hadn't even had to ask, not really, because he had told her exactly what it was that his fellow cylon had been injecting her with all along: fertility drugs.

He had told her that on the first day they had been together, right after he had raped her for the first time. At the time he had mockingly pointed out that if she was ever going to fulfill her destiny as the mother of the new race, the drugs alone were not going to cut it.

That had sent a chill down her spine, especially because she knew that, having been married and out of the military for almost a year --and with repopulation being one of the new colony's top priorities-- it had also been almost a year since she had been allowed anywhere near a contraceptive. That meant that physically it was impossible for her to fight Leoben and that from a physiological perspective there was nothing to keep her from conceiving so chances were that sooner or later Simon's drugs would do what they were meant to... especially because he still came almost every day, keeping up the regular injections, ultrasounds and blood-tests. In other words, she had no control whatsoever over the situation and no real hope of that changing any time soon.

That was one of the things she had found hardest to cope with: the total loss of control. It reminded her too much of being at her mother's mercy when she was a child, unable to defend herself. The truth was that --as much as she wanted to deny it-- powerlessness was not a new experience for her, far from it, but in a way that familiarity had only served to make matters worse. She had fought so hard to leave that part of her past behind, to become Starbuck. When she had gone off to flight school she had promised herself that she would never give anyone that kind of power over her again but over the years she had allowed herself to forget that that power wasn't necessarily hers to give... she had become complacent and allowed herself to forget just how easily it could be wrestled from her.

The problem was that --to make matters worse-- Leoben was not content just wrestling that power away from her, no, that would have been too easy. He wanted to do a lot more than that: he wanted her to become an active, 'willing' participant in her own debasement, he wanted her to be the one to **_hand_** that control over to him.

To him it was all a game, one she soon realized she had no choice but to play.

Oh, she had tried to keep herself under control, she had tried to keep herself from giving him the satisfaction of hearing her scream. She had even gone so far as to force herself to allow him to do whatever he wanted without fighting him, just lying there motionless and unresponsive, trying desperately not to feel but in the end he had managed to break her and that had only added to his satisfaction... and he hadn't been shy when the time had come to let her know that.

From the very first day Leoben had left her no doubt about it: she could choose the carrot or she could choose the stick but what she couldn't do was to refuse to choose at all... and while up to that point Kara had managed to force herself to choose the stick, she knew that by doing so she was still playing straight into his hands, that whether she chose to endure the pain or to escape it, in the end it made no difference because either way he was still the one in control.

That was something that had become apparent to her from the first time Leoben had pushed her against that wall: she could make things easier or harder for herself, those were her only choices, and while up to that point she had chosen pain over compliance, as far as Leoben was concerned that changed nothing... and the idea of being granted a reprieve was becoming more and more appealing with each and every passing second.

After all, as Leoben kept reminding her --especially when the pain became almost unbearable, when his gaze and his touch became more intrusive than she could stand-- she had the power to make it stop, she could escape it all... and all she had to do to make it so was to say the word, all she had to do was to give in, to stop fighting.


	3. Part 3: The Carrot

**_For notes, warnings and disclaimers see part 1._**

**Part 3: The Carrot**

Kara couldn't stop herself from thinking back to the first time Leoben had explained to her what the 'rules' were going to be. It had been only hours after Simon had handed her over to him, when he had first taken her into 'their' room and laid out some clothes for her on a chair by the head of the bed, so close that she could almost touch them... almost.

The problem was that those clothes were not hers, not yet, though as he had told her they were hers to earn. Of course, if she wanted to earn them she was going to have to do it by doing exactly as she was told, by obeying each and every one of Leoben's commands... at least in bed. Oh, he had made it clear that he did not really expect compliance elsewhere, that he actually found her defiance amusing --though that didn't mean that she would not be punished for her disobedience if she took things too far-- but in 'their' bed the rules were going to be different, in their bed he was to be her absolute master and that was a lesson that had been driven home in a particularly painful way when he had let his guard down for a few seconds and she had taken advantage of the opportunity to crush his windpipe.

She had known even then that it was a bad idea. She knew enough about the cylons to realize that it was only a matter of time, of a couple of hours at most, before he would be back and that when he did he was going to be pissed but at the time she hadn't really cared. What she hadn't been expecting, however, was to have Leoben come back with reinforcements. She had been in the shower when she had heard him return... only when she had turned around it hadn't been 'him', it had been 'them'. There had been over a dozen copies staring at her, indistinguishable from each other and they had dragged her back to the bed, where the dead copy still remained.

She remembered looking up at the eerie circle of identical faces that were towering over her, pinning her down, holding her, touching her and then, as they kept taking turns, trying to escape their gaze by looking away only to be met by the dead eyes of the copy she had killed earlier. The details of that encounter were still somewhat blurry in her mind but what she did know was that eventually she had passed out and when she had come to she had been so sore she had barely been able to move... and she had also been alone in bed with a single, breathing copy of Leoben, one that was still running its hands all over her body. There had been no trace of the one she had killed earlier, nor had she had anything but the pain to remind her of the fact that the others had ever even been there.

That had been one of the most brutal incidents but in that regard she had the comfort of knowing that, at least from a physical perspective, it was as bad as things were likely to get because the next day Simon had really laid into Leoben. When he had examined her he had noticed that she was still bleeding so he had ordered a couple of centurions to escort her back to the center's medical facility and there he had reminded his fellow cylon that she had a higher purpose --one that went beyond his games-- and that they couldn't allow him to jeopardize that purpose by getting carried away and inflicting any sort of permanent damage. As it was the bruising and the tearing had turned out to be extensive enough to warrant him ordering Leoben not to have intercourse with her for at least a week and to be 'careful' for a week after that.

That should have been a relief: a week long reprieve, a week in which Leoben was not going to be allowed to touch her... only it wasn't. For starters Simon's exam had been incredibly painful. She was lucky to have escaped the whole thing without stitches and she knew it but still --as had been the case back on that basestar-- the cylon doctor hadn't exactly bothered with any kind of anesthetic as he examined her and cleaned the cuts and then, much to her dismay, he had handed Leoben an ointment he was instructed to apply every four to six hours and Leoben had been particularly diligent about it.

Sure, she had tried to fight him off the first time he did it, after he had taken her back to their 'apartment' but --as usual-- he had overpowered her without even breaking a sweat and then the next time around she had found herself being held in place by the cold, mechanical hands of two centurions.

As far as she was concerned that whole scene had felt more than a little surreal.

The centurions' grip had been punishing and she remembered feeling almost as if the slightest move would have resulted in her arms and legs being torn from her body... and then there had been Leoben. The cylon had certainly taken his time, acting almost as if the centurions weren't there, letting his touch linger when all she wanted was for him to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible. He had even gone so far as to apologize for getting carried away as he gently ran his fingers over the cuts while telling her that she had 'pushed him' into it... and then he had reminded her, as he always did, of just how easily she could make the pain stop.

That had been an ordeal she had not been willing to go through again so the third time, when Leoben had ordered her to lay down and spread her legs for him, she had fought down her shame and reluctantly done as she was told.

In fact that had been one of those moments that had caused her to find herself wondering if fighting was even worth it. She couldn't stop him no matter what she did but maybe she could make it easier for herself if she would just give in. Would that have been so bad? Was there anything she could hope to gain from her defiance? Was her pride worth it? She was trapped, she had no chance of escape and she knew it. Whether or not she fought him, she was still playing Leoben's game by Leoben's rules so what was the harm in choosing the carrot, in accepting the clothes he had offered her on that first day and everything that went with them, including a chance to escape the pain?

It was a tempting prospect but at the same time she was almost painfully aware of the fact that she could barely stand his touch as he applied that damned ointment without flinching or throwing up and she knew that what he would demand of her in return for those clothes would require her to do a hell of a lot more than to just hold herself still with her legs spread open.

Sure, as far as she was concerned sex was just sex. It could be fun, at least when both parties were into it, but the truth was that she had never been one of those people to give it much of a higher meaning. She had never been the kind of girl boys took home and she had always known it. She had always been a one night frak, nothing more and nothing less... at least until Zak, and even then they had been forced to **_try_** to keep their relationship a secret because that relationship had been against the rules. In fact Lee was the only one who had known about them at the time and that was only because Zak had never been good at keeping anything from his big brother. Even Sam had taken her to bed when they had known each other for only a day or so and she hadn't really given it much thought. As far as she was concerned that was the way the game was played so why couldn't she just play the game with Leoben and escape the pain? Was it because he wasn't human or was it because playing the game with Leoben would have meant relinquishing control and that was the one thing she had never been willing to do?

Well, she wasn't in control this time around, that much was obvious, but still she kept fighting and she was determined to keep on doing it for as long as she could. She was determined to keep on fighting even as she longingly looked at the clothes Leoben had laid out for her by the head of their bed on that first day, so close that she could almost touch them... almost. 


	4. Part 4: The Fire

**_For notes, warnings and disclaimers see part 1_**

**Part 4: The Fire**

Kara was looking at the clothes folded by the head of the bed as she always did when Leoben wasn't around, not quite daring to reach for them, knowing that once she touched them she would never be able to force herself to let them go.

Was she ready to take that step? That was a question she asked herself almost every day.

She knew that by taking the clothes she would not only be accepting Leoben's control but she would also be giving him something he could take away. As long as she remained naked that was one power he **_didn't_** have. Sure, he could still hurt her and do whatever he wanted with her body --she had come to accept that a long time before-- but she didn't owe him anything... her acceptance of those clothes was bound to change that. She craved them, desperately, but at the same time she was all too aware of what those clothes stood for: they were meant to be a sign of ownership, of the fact that she acknowledged Leoben to be her master. That was what he had been unable to get her to do up to that point.

Up to that point he had been able to **_take_** whatever he wanted, there was no denying that, but at the same time she hadn't **_given_** him anything.

The problem was that even though she was reluctant to accept what those clothes entailed, she couldn't help but to acknowledge that so far her pride and her defiance hadn't done her much good. Sure, up to that point she had managed to keep herself going by telling herself that sooner or later the Old Man would come back, by trying to convince herself that someday, somehow, she would escape Leoben's clutches and when that day came she wanted to be able to look at herself in the mirror and know that --in spite of everything he had done to her body-- Leoben had not managed to break her but at the same time with each and every passing day it became harder for her to quell the little voice in the back of her mind that kept whispering that she had no hope when it came to freeing herself and that her dreams of being rescued by a knight in shining armor --or battlestar as the case might be-- were nothing but dreams, that the Old Man was never coming back, that chances were that both the Galactica and the Pegasus had already been destroyed and were nothing but clusters of debris floating among the stars and that this time around there would be no way out of the hellhole she not-so-lovingly called home. She knew that if that was the case then one way or another she was bound to spend the rest of her life pushing out half-cylon bastards... and that if that was what was in store for her then life with Leoben was bound to be preferable to being hooked to one of those machines she had seen back on Caprica.

In fact she had barely dared to contemplate the possibility that there could be farms on New Caprica already, that other women could have been taken and that as bad as things were for her, they were probably a lot worse for them... and that she couldn't run the risk that Simon and the others would grow frustrated by Leoben's lack of progress and take her away from him.

That was a terrifying alternative but she knew it wasn't one she could afford to ignore, not completely.

When those thoughts got to be too much, Kara tried to convince herself that if the Galactica and the Pegasus had been destroyed Leoben would almost certainly have said something, that he would probably have gloated about it for days on end but at the same time she knew --and he knew-- that no matter what he said she would never have believed him so the fact that he hadn't said anything didn't really mean all that much.

That brought her back to the question of whether or not keeping up her defiance made sense, especially because the answer to that question depended largely on whether or not there would ever be a way out of her current predicament. In that regard she knew that accepting the clothes would be akin to giving up hope and she wasn't sure she was ready to do that... or maybe she just wasn't ready to accept that she already had.

The bottom line was that even though the idea of spending a lifetime playing house with Leoben was almost more than she could stand, she knew she couldn't allow herself to forget that it was still far from a worst case scenario. At times her despair had gotten so bad that she had actually considered the possibility of ending it all, of killing herself even if it went against everything she believed in but she hadn't reached that point yet and deep down she suspected that she never would. As much as people had always told her that she had a death wish the truth was that her survival instinct was too strong and in spite of everything she still wanted to live.

That was what the whole thing boiled down to.

Realizing that in the end the outcome was inevitable, Kara reached for those clothes, covering her body for the first time in more than three months and then, with her choice made, she sat down to wait for her 'husband' to come home.

THE END?

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**_Author's notes_**: Hi guys, okay I suspect that last week's chapter scared most of my reviewers --and probably quite a few of my readers-- away. Sorry about that but I did say that this was going to be dark and I also warned you that it was going to be hurt without comfort (unless I happen to change my mind about writing a sequel at some point, of course). Anyway, this was my twisted little take on what could have happened in the four months between LDYB and 'Occupation'. It was also an attempt to write a sort of 'stage one' story that would explain **_why_** Leoben took so long before bringing Kacey into the picture (other than to make the timing work for the producers, of course).

I would also like to thank you for taking the time to read this. I know this was not exactly the easiest of fics but it was something I wanted to see if I could pull off. As always, reviews are deeply appreciated,

Alec


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